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Some of these rundown and abandoned houses were downright spooky, until TOH readers got ahold of them. Explore some these dramatic before and afters

Before: Abandoned After a Fire

Walt and Patricia Purcell saw this Petersburg, Virginia, cottage while visiting their son and daughter-in-law. The kids had bought the adjacent, larger house as a vacation getaway—and potential retirement spot for their parents. The house wasn't much to look at, really. Abandoned for 20 years after a fire, the windows and doors were missing, charred, or boarded up. There were no floors downstairs, and the water-damaged plaster was crumbling. Squirrels ran in and out, and birds nested in the claw-foot tub. Yet there was a certain charm to the place. The old brick, dating from the 1850s, had wonderful color, the window lintels were solid granite, and the upstairs had heart-pine floors.
See more on this before-and-after in A Ramshackle Little House Gets a Second Life